Chapter1
For seven years, I hid my identity as a Pureblood Queen, enduring the agonizing backlash of daily blood draws just to suppress the hybrid rejection syndrome wreaking havoc in my son's body.
I thought that if I hollowed out my entire life for him and his father, our family could live happily.
Until today. My husband claimed my son was dying, then used a cluster of thick, pure-silver needles to drain three thousand milliliters of my blood. Yet, when I dragged my broken body out of the extraction room, I saw my perfectly healthy son hand over a fourth blood bag—the one that would run me entirely dry—all for a piece of candy from someone else's hand.
In that sudden clarity, I realized my seven years of sacrifice had ultimately been fed to the dogs.
For seven years, to suppress the vicious clash between the werewolf and vampire genes inside Leo, I willingly lay in this extraction chair every single day to draw a two-hundred-milliliter tube of blood to sustain his life. Today, Kael strode in and barked an order directly at the nurse.
"Use the largest catheter and connect three blood bags. Skip the anesthesia; it affects the serum's purity."
"Three thousand milliliters?" I shot up from the chair. "Kael, even a vampire can't handle losing three thousand milliliters! How did Leo's vitals crash so fast? I need to see him!"
I tried to scramble off the bed, but heavy hands shoved me firmly back down into the chair.
"He's in the isolation ward fighting for his life. Do you want to go in there and kill him right now?" Kael's eyes were deeply bloodshot. He grabbed the heavy restraint strap and locked it dead around my wrist. "Draw the blood! Now!"
I took a deep shuddering breath. "Do it." I closed my eyes. "As long as it saves him."
The nurse pulled out the specialized IV needle designed specifically to suppress a vampire's healing abilities and drove it ruthlessly into my vein.
"Ah!" The instant the pure silver contacted my vampire blood, my entire body violently convulsed, and the machine frantically extracted my blood.
For the sake of my son, I bit down hard on my lower lip. Forty minutes later, the machine's warning alarm blared. My blood pressure had plummeted to a critical level, and the edges of my vision started to blur.
"Kael..." I slumped weakly against the back of the chair. "That's enough blood... take it to Leo... I want to look at him... through the glass..."
Kael didn't answer me. He simply picked up the heavy blood bags, turned around, and walked out of the room.
Clinging to my last shred of consciousness, I turned my head and looked through the frosted glass of the ward. When my eyes focused on the scene next door, a loud ringing deafened my ears.
My seven-year-old son, Leo, sat perfectly fine on the sofa in the ward, playing his handheld game. He wasn't in the emergency room. Instead, the person lying in the hospital bed was Chloe. She looked somewhat pale, offering Kael a weak, tormented, yet deeply grateful smile.
"Kael!" I snapped the left restraint with a violent jerk and stumbled wildly through the partition door. I lunged at Kael, who was busy hooking the transfusion lines into Chloe's arm. "You lied to me?!"
"You used Leo's life to trick me into giving you my blood? Kael, I gave that blood to save our son!"
Kael forcefully caught my wrist and threw me to the floor with effortless cruelty.
"If I didn't say that, would you have laid there quietly and let them draw this much blood?" He looked down at me from his towering height. "Leo's vitals were fine yesterday, but Chloe's blood poison has fully erupted. If we don't do a total blood exchange, she won't survive the night."
"What does her surviving the night have to do with me?!" I roared from the floor tiles. "I am your wife, and this is my life! How could you sacrifice me for her..."
"If she hadn't saved me seven years ago, how would she have contracted this damn blood poison in the first place?" Kael crouched down abruptly, his fingers gripping my chin like a vice. "Since you're not even afraid to die for Leo, why can't you spare a little to save my savior? Elara, don't make me think you're sickeningly vicious."
I stared into his anger-filled eyes. Over on the bed, Chloe immediately shrank back and clutched her chest.
"Kael... don't blame my sister..." she cried breathlessly. "If curing me makes her this angry, I'd rather not be treated... Just pull the tubes. Let me die in pain."
"Shut up. You must live today," Kael snapped, his gaze instantly softening with heartache as he stopped her.
Just then, the life monitor beside the bed flatlined into a long screech. The nurse rushed over in a panic.
"Alpha, the patient's blood poison is too aggressive! Three thousand milliliters of blood isn't enough to complete the exchange. We're still a little short!"
Kael whipped his head around and stared at me.
I shrank back instinctively. "No... You can't draw any more, Kael. The pure-silver needle is still inside me, and I've been overdrawing my blood every single day for seven years. My regeneration can't keep up. I'll die..."
Leo, who had been sitting on the sofa playing his game, stood up. He walked over to the hospital bed. Chloe saw Leo, and she weakly opened her palm toward my seven-year-old son. Resting inside was an exquisite little box.
"Leo, be a good boy..." she grimaced in feigned agony. "You see Auntie is about to die from your family's blood poison. It hurts so much... Could you help Auntie fetch that empty bag over there?"
The moment those words left her mouth, my breathing nearly stopped.
"Just hand it to me..." Chloe nudged the little tin box closer. "This whole box of out-of-print Fairy Candies... Auntie will give them all to you. Help Kael, okay?"
Leo swallowed hard. He looked at me first, then at the box of candy he had been begging for but couldn't buy anywhere. He walked over and picked up the empty blood bag.
"Leo..." My lips trembled violently, my vision already obscured by hot tears. "Mommy's body can't make new blood right now... Mommy will really lose her life..."
Without any hesitation, Leo handed the blood bag to the nurse. He scrunched up his delicate little eyebrows.
"But Daddy said you make new blood super fast! You draw it for me every day, and haven't you always been perfectly fine? Why did you become so stingy when Aunt Chloe got sick?"
He shoved the box of Fairy Candies tightly into his pocket.
"Daddy told me that Auntie got sick because of bad vampires like you. You always teach me to correct my mistakes when I do something wrong, so why won't you cure Auntie?" He glared at me with clear, childish disdain. "Don't you want to be a good mommy?"
The nurse walked toward me with a new pure-silver needle, and my hand clutching my chest hesitated no more.
